Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner vs. Malicious communications
Over 3,000 people are arrested each year in the UK for offensive comments posted online. This is because Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 criminalises online speech that can be deemed ‘grossly offensive’, even without a requirement for a prosecutor to prove that there was any intention to cause offence.
Communications Act 2003 Section 127(1) covers offensive and threatening messages sent over a "public" electronic communications network. Since 2010 it has increasingly been used to arrest and prosecute individuals for messages posted to sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
December 2012, to strike a balance between freedom of speech and criminality, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued interim guidelines, clarifying when social messaging is eligible for criminal prosecution under UK law. Only communications that are credible threats of violence, harassment, or stalking (such as aggressive Internet trolling) which specifically targets an individual or individuals or breaches a court order designed to protect someone (such as those protecting the identity of a victim of a sexual offence) will be prosecuted.
Communications that express an "unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, or banter or humour, even if distasteful to some and painful to those subjected to it" will not.
People who pass on malicious messages, such as by retweeting, can also be prosecuted when the original message is subject to prosecution.
More recently, Section 127 has been used to prosecute those alleged to have sent grossly offensive messages on a public electronic communications network, such as WhatsApp, but which were not visible to an audience beyond the intended recipients.
In 2022, a serving police officer and a former constable each received 12-week prison sentences for sending racist, misogynistic, ableist, and homophobic messages to an encrypted WhatsApp group.
Comments (1)
Точно, нужно защищать демократию от свободы слова!